Compassion and the Human End, Pururtha1

Swami Dayananda Saraswati

It looks as though there is a choice in commanding a degree of compassion. I say this

because if someone is compassionate we praise the person as being a saint, which means that the
person is very special. This is not acceptable in the Vedic culture. In its vision, everyone has to
grow into a saint because dharma is, in itself, a pururtha, a human end. This is not fully
understood. Therefore, let us look into this in greater detail.

The four human ends

Dharma, artha, kma, and moka are the four pururthas, the caturvidha-pururth. By
definition, that which is desired by all people is a pururtha, sarvai puruai arthyate iti
pururtha. It is something that is desired by all people and prayed for, prrthyate. Purua means
a person, implying both male and female.

Moka is the most important human end and it is achieved in this birth

Among the four pururthas, the most important, mukhya, is moka. Why is that so? Let us
suppose that you say moka means not having punarjanma, re-birth. A lot of people would then
say that they are not interested in that because they want to be reborn. When I say that moka is
right now, why should I talk of re-birth? If there is a re-birth, we will work on that too. I am very
much here and would like to see that I am free enough to have a limited body, a limited mind,
limited knowledge, and of course, limited money. If these constitute limitation, there is no moka
from limitations because these limitations constitute my being.

The body is limited, the mind is limited, knowledge is limited, money is limited, power is
limited, and even influence is limited. Even if you become the President of the United States of
America you are still subject to certain limitations. Nobody on this earth, no matter what he or she
has, is really a happy person. There is always the problem of how one is going to overcome these
limitations and enjoy freedom. Death may be a form of freedom, but then people say you will be
reborn, so death is not freedom. You are a traveler and you will be back. Therefore, there is no
such thing as moka after death.

There are religions, which promote heaven as their ultimate goal. They are heaven-bound
and they say that all of us should go to heaven. This promotion of going to heaven, is it a kind of
tourism or what? Am I going there as an individual, a jva? That the individual soul survives the
death of the body and goes to heaven is a belief one can have. But will this soul have a body or
not? If you have a body of your own, you will continue to have the same problem limitations of
the body-mind-sense complex. Even if you have a heavenly body, some other heavenly body will
be different from your body and there is bound to be comparison. A sense of limitation is
inevitable. Further, in heaven, there would be a ruler, and you would be the ruled. Therefore,
heaven is not a solution.

1
Excerpts from the book, Living versus Getting On by Pujya Swami Dayananda Sarasawati edited by Jayshree Ramakrishnan, Chaya
Rajaram, and Krishnakumar (KK) S. Davey, 2005.

www.avgsatsang.org
 If there is something called moka, either I am free already or I can never be free. If I am
free right now and here, it is only a question of knowing how. This freedom, moka, is the
parama-pururtha, the ultimate end.

Dharma is usually presented as a means which subserves the pursuits of artha and kma

As a pururtha, artha means power, security, name and fame, etc., because they give you a
sense of security. You can encash your name and fame in society, so when you consider artha you
should also include this aspect of influence and power. Some of these things can also be viewed as
kma because they give you a sense of ego gratification, which is kma. So artha becomes kma.
Music, food, relationships, familyall these, because they provide some satisfaction, are kma.
Any ego gratification, name, fame, etc., also provides this sense of satisfaction.

The pururthas are to be understood as the means to achieve various ends. There are a
number of means, sdhanas, for achieving these various ends. For instance, getting an education
and equipping yourself professionally are the means for the pursuit of artha-kma. Among the
means and ends, the sdhana-sdhya in the various artha-kma pursuits, one of the means, they
say, is dharma. They say that you should continue your pursuit of artha and kma, but be mindful
of dharma. In doing so, which is the pururtha? Is dharma the pururtha? No, it is not. Artha
is the pururtha and kma is the pururtha. You are told to follow dharma when you pursue
artha and kma. Therefore, in this approach, dharma becomes a subserving sdhana for the pursuits
of artha and kma. To say that you have to follow dharma in order to accomplish artha and kma
is paying lip service to dharma.

As I listen to people of different religious persuasions, I find that nobody thinks of dharma
as a pururtha, as an end to be accomplished. Even many Indian spiritual leaders do not seem to
understand this. They always say dharma has to be followed in order to achieve artha and kma
and that is why dharma is at the beginning of the list. This is not correct.

Dharma is as much a pururtha as artha and kma

Dharma has as much of a place among the pururthas as artha and kma, the common ends
that human beings want to accomplish. Dharma is also an end to be accomplished. That is the
reason why we do not look upon saintliness as something that a special person chooses to have or
is endowed with. We do not accept that concept.

Ahis and Compassion

In following dharma, a number of values and attitudes are listed in our stra as necessary
for a human being. Ahis is mentioned in the list given in the thirteenth chapter of the Bhagavad
Gita [13-8], amnitvam adambhitvam ahis kntir rjavam, absence of conceit, absence of
hypocrisy, harmlessness, accommodation, straightforwardness, but day is not mentioned there. It is
mentioned, however, in another verse, adve sarvabhtnm maitra karua eva ca, the one who
has no hatred or ill-will to any being, the one who has the disposition of a friend, who is
compassionate [Bhagavad Gita, 12-13]. When you look into these three words, maitra, karua,
and adve, you see their expression in bhta-day, compassion for all beings. If you stretch

www.avgsatsang.org
ahis, not hurting, it becomes bhta-day.

We have always maintained that among the values of dharma, ahis is the most exalted,
ahis paramo dharma. When you stay with ahis and do not gloss over it, it becomes day.
When you follow ahis, compassion, day, is inevitable because you cannot follow ahis without
being compassionate. If you say na hise, I do not hurt, it means that you have to have
compassion. You can use your will to curb the tendency to hurt. Compassion follows. That is
why both Mahvra and the Buddha highlighted ahis. Therefore, ahis is a dharma that
occupies the first place.

Compassion and speaking the truth

We often hear it said that satyam, speaking the truth, is very important. Nevertheless, you
can speak the truth and make everybody suffer because the truth you speak may be unpleasant.
You are honest, but when you begin talking everybody runs away from you because you are so
brutally honest. Speaking the truth also implies that you need to be pleasant. Satya bryt
priya bryt na bryt satyam apriyam [Manu Smti, 4-138], speak the truth, speak what is
pleasant, do not speak a truth that is unpleasant. Therefore, do not deceive in order to please, but
at the same time, do not tell the truth if it can displease people. Just keep quiet in those instances.
This is why we have been given a choice to speak or not to speak.

It is important to learn when not to speak. Knowing when to speak is different. Knowing
when not to speak is more important than knowing when to speak because often, when we speak,
what we say does not matter at all. When speaking does not matter, not speaking is very
important. People think that satyam is just speaking the truth, but sometimes this can make
everybody suffer, including you. It is an indication that you cannot be kind to yourself. Therefore,
it is really compassion that makes you a person who speaks the truth. It is not that non-
compassionate people tell lies, but a compassionate person does not need to tell a lie, and does not
need to prove himself or herself as a person.

You will find that if you pursue any one value, everything else will follow. These values are
like noodles; they always come as a bunch. So by following ahis, you follow all the values there
are, because you cannot follow one without following all the others.

No other pururtha is to be pursued at the cost of dharma

Dharma is something you have to follow, sometimes, even at the cost of artha or at the cost
of kma. Dharma, therefore, becomes an independent end to be achieved. It does not subserve the
other endsit is an independent pururtha.

I have heard people saying that if you follow dharma, everything else, including moka, will
take care of itself. It will not take care of itself, but at least you become ready for self-knowledge,
which is moka, if you follow dharma.

www.avgsatsang.org
Compassion
Compassion has to be discovered to pursue dharma

In the matrix of values, compassion, which characterizes saintliness, has got to be acquired.
To grow from being a mere survivor, into a contributor necessarily involves becoming a person of
compassion. How does that happen? You need to discover compassion by acting it out. An act of
compassion can evoke compassion that may be inhibited. An act is always deliberate; it is different from an
instinctual or impulsive response, which is more of a reaction. In a deliberate act of compassion, one acts
deliberately, as though one has compassion, because one has a value for compassion. Performing an act of
compassion will make you compassionate. People would say that an act of compassion is helping
somebody who needs help. I think this is a simple human action with a degree of compassion. A true act
of compassion is deliberate, such as when you perceive that somebody has done something wrong to you,
and yet pray for that persons welfare. If somebody does you a disservice and yet, you reach out, you cross
all the borders of anger and hatred and get into a new territory that you are not used to, that is called an act
of compassion. There is value for being compassionate in an act of compassion, and if you keep
doing it consistently, compassion will be with you.

Compassion, the dynamic form of nanda, is our very own nature

Compassion, the dynamic form of nanda, is your very nature. Whether you know it
completely or not, you can understand this muchthat nanda cannot be anything other than you.
There is no object called nanda and there is no place called nanda. There is no person whom
you can recognize as nanda. It is not a given time, and it is not an attribute of an object. There
is no place, a magic place, where you go to become happy. You can be happy and you can be
unhappy anywhere. Still, you do have moments of happiness and, therefore, you can understand
that happiness is not anywhere else except centered on you.

We are happy when we are ourselves,

ourselves, when we do not see ourselves as wanting persons

Some say that happiness is inside you. What does that mean? Is happiness in the mind? If
the mind makes you happy, does it mean that when you are sad, there is no mind? Even in having
its desires fulfilled, the mind is happy only temporarily. However, whenever you are happy, more
often than not, you have not fulfilled any desire. Also, more often than not, you need not fulfill a
desire to be happy. So what does this happiness depend upon? It depends upon you. It is not
even the condition of the mind. When you do not see yourself as a wanting person, if a situation
does not evoke a wanting person, you are happy. It is as simple as that. That is your nature. In
fact, you are happy when you are yourself, not when you are what you think you are. That is why
self-forgetting becomes so important. When what you think about yourself makes you unhappy,
then, self-forgetting makes you happy.

Compassion brings us closer to our true nature

Since you do not make a complaint that you are happy, but you cannot stand yourself when
you are unhappy, we can say that the happy person, the person you love to be is yourself. This
logic, born of experience, is called anubhava-yukti. Your own experience, anubhava, gives you a
certain yukti, a certain line of reasoning, which helps you understand that you are nanda.
Compassion is a dynamic form of nanda, and that is the reason why, when there is compassion,

www.avgsatsang.org
you are close to yourself. That is why it seems to be the most important thing.

Compassion is the most important value to be cultivated deliberately

When I look into the system of human values, what stands out for me as a thing to be
cultivated deliberately and consciously is compassion. It evokes the bigness in you, the wholeness
in you, the love, the giving, and the understanding in you. It is this relatively whole person who
can discover that he is the whole. In this discovery there is complete release, moka, from the
human struggle against a sense of limitation and, therefore, it is the ultimate human end.

www.avgsatsang.org